


In the Dying of Our Souls Our Bodies Were The Only Answer

by howveryzoe



Category: Frühlings Erwachen | Spring Awakening - Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Canon Setting, Character Deaths, M/M, Second Person Narration, This came out of nowhere, also it's all a flashback, another piece of shit zoe wrote in math class, anything dark is mostly subtext, but it's there in the play, but like canon character deaths, have fun i hate myself, i guess some homophobia but just like historical and not really like only in a little subtext, idkkkkkkk, just a fic for lydia's graduation, just two years, most characters are just like mentioned, nothing dramatic, semi-significant age difference??, sort of i mean i don't think it's a big deal, title comes from avalanches thanks jordan!!!!, very play based like follows the play timeline and everything, weird necrophilia elements trust me it makes sense when you read it????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7047262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howveryzoe/pseuds/howveryzoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Search fearlessly for every sin for out of sin comes joy"-Frank Wedekind</p><p>Lying one night in the vineyard Hanschen Rilow reflects on how this all came to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Dying of Our Souls Our Bodies Were The Only Answer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShippingEverything](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShippingEverything/gifts).



> This was a gift for Lydia for their Graduation CONGRATULATIONS BABE I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!  
> I'm not sure what this is but it was interesting to write have fun!  
> Also thank you Jordan (ehrnst on tumblr) for making me aware of the song I give her credit to the title. The song is called Avalanches and it's lit.

You’re lying in the dead grass of the vineyard watching the bugs crawl across the branches above you. The afternoon sun is bright in your eyes, not yet hidden by the mountains. You have slipped your shoes and socks off and are feeling the soil between your toes. The suit jacket with its gold miniature of Jesus that was a gift from your father is discarded by you to the side. You’ve loosened your tie and unbuttoned the top of your shirt but not fully leaving your suspenders up as well. You know he likes undoing your tie and taking off your shirt and suspenders. You think it makes him feel weirdly domestic. He’ll be there soon, he always comes. Sunday afternoons, before the sun has set behind the mountains is the time of your meeting. He’ll be there to kiss unshed tears out of your eyes. Make you forget how numb you are. Make you feel. He’ll climb up the hill, push away the vines, and view you lying like Ophelia, only instead of drowning you breathe for the first time in your short fifteen years.

It’s different with him than with Max. Perhaps this has to do with the age and experience you both have while then it had been more of an exploration. This is mature, practiced love. You also don’t know him like you knew Max. Without years of friendship behind you, you trust each other less and seek to please and impress him. He’s two years older than you and you’re half a foot shorter than him at least. Max was rougher than him though, he holds as if you’re far more breakable than Max ever viewed you as. There’s a sophistication to sex with him too. Though you know you’re much worldlier than him. And smarter to. Maybe it’s just his maturity. Or confidence. How he can match your loftiness with pure, simple, snark. It drives you mad but you love it. That’s the other thing. Max was no talker. Sure, you talked but mostly he listened. Or you just held each other close, neither saying a word. With Ernst, however, you can converse for ages about anything. With him you are desperate to impress. You’ve also, of course, known him your whole life. But in the detached way you know the milkman or a distant neighbor. Name, face, general attributes. Just another schoolboy until they become so much more than that.

Your earliest memory of him is at age eight. Max had wanted to go swimming with the older boys and had dragged you and Wendla. The two of you sat on a blanket on the sand, Holding straw hats over your heads as you watched him splash about with the boys. Ilse Neumann was the only girl to venture off the beach, her long red tendrils soaked with water. You are the only boy to remain behind and too young to realize it is wrong to be so. You don’t know why you noticed Ernst. He didn’t exactly stand out in anyway. Dark hair, taller than some of the boys. But not that Greek style of handsome like Melchior Gabor. Or even having that thoughtful look in beautiful  eyes like Moritz Stiefel. Handsome, sure, but ordinary. Still your eyes followed him as the bright noon sun alight his body and he swam farther and farther away from the shore towards the rough waters. 

You remember grabbing Wendla’s arm anxiously.

“He’s gone too far!” You nearly yelled.

“Who?” She responded, distracted.

“Robel, he’s too far out.” You ran your fingers through short blonde hair and she laughed lightly.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine, he’s a big boy.” But you weren’t convinced. And a few minutes later his head went under the water suddenly, there is a quick waving of his long arms and then nothing. You screamed, the frantic kind that rips at your throat, and caught Max’s attention almost instantly. The boys looked and noticed the missing head and quickly swam out. You stayed on the shore, your heart thumping in your chest. After too long a time Mortiz pointed the body out and Max grabbed him and dragged him quickly to the shore, holding his slack head above the water. His eyes were closed and his lips blue. Ilse ran off to find a doctor. You watched with dread in the pit of your stomach as the doctor carried his limp body off the shore. No one said anything to you children. No words of comfort, the grown up’s faces were blank and impassive. You began to cry and Max wrapped his arms around you. An act that was indecent for boys of your age but it’s not as if Max has ever cared. 

All day the whisper was they can’t wake him up. That his lungs were full of water. Otto swore up and down that Ernst’s whole body was blue, that he saw him vomit up swollen water logged organs. Melchior told him to shut up. But Ernst lived. He was in church that Sunday cloaked in white. And in a few weeks you all have forgotten about it. But there’s something about him lying on the sand that had stuck in your head. Something almost romantic and exciting about his blue, chapped lips. His pale unmoving body. You never told anyone about it. Not even Max. It’s too dark a part of you to share.

There was nothing beautiful about Max’s body . By the end his face was sallow and his eyes ringed in black circles. And his death wasn’t romantic. He spent his last few hours screaming and vomiting and kicking and he didn’t even know who you were. You caught yourself wanting it to just end. Him to just die already. And when it happens you just felt empty inside. But you weren’t empty enough to not be sobbing over your Homer at the back of the class. A seat you’d been demoted to thanks to all the school you missed for him. Reading tales of lost Odyseuss while you found yourself trapped in your own personal shipwreck. So far from home. And Penelope is lost for good. 

Otto, Georg, and Robert and even Moritz, though tentatively, asked you about Max. What was it like? What did he look like? How does it feel to touch a dead body? Their questions ripped at the facade you tried to hold up over your quivering face.

“Did you cry?” Lammermeier asked. As if the red that stained your eyes wasn’t evident. Ernst was the only boy Lammermeier’s height. And he puffed out his chest and glared at him.

“Just leave him alone. Hanschen is clearly upset enough without you. You should be ashamed.” Ernst’s words would have sounded sanctimonious out of anyone else’s mouth. Even Melchior probably couldn’t have gotten away with them. But Ernst is nothing if not sincere. The other boys backed down and left you two alone in the school yard. He bent down a bit to meet your downcast eyes. “I’ve never lost anyone before but I can imagine it hurts something awful. They shouldn’t pester you like that. It’s unchristian to say the least.” You nodded, barely taking the words in. “If any of them bother you again, I don’t know how but I’ll make them stop. I swear it okay?”

That made you look up and you saw the boy’s eyes shining with anger and determination. And for the first time in your life you saw him as more than a corpse in your dreams but as a living, breathing, boy. Vibrant and loyal and kind. “Thank you.” You finally managed in a soft whisper. And then turned on your heel and sped off home before you could see his reaction.

You couldn’t seem to shake him from then on. He would walk you home from school, smile at you in church, catch your eye while reciting latin. Always finding some reason to talk to you be it quadratic equations or conjugating Greek. You weren’t quite sure what the interest is in at first. Maybe, you thought at first, because he’s the bottom of the class and you, though the youngest, are the top. But Moritz wasn’t your lapdog as well and his grades were just as low. And Ernst isn’t a panderer. And you’re not known for your generosity anyway. Sooner or later it became clear that he was in it for you. Not for Herr Rilow who gets top marks. But for Hanschen who reads Shakespeare alone at lunch and cries to himself behind the willow tree. No one had looked at you as you are since Max died and Wendla’s mother had stopped her from playing with the boys. It was strange and you found yourself thinking of it constantly. You didn’t exactly mind it but you were confused by it.

You were asleep one night when you dreamed of him. Of him taking you in his arms and kissing the air from your lungs and moving lower and quicker and harder and you awoke sweating. You hadn’t dreamed of anyone like that since Max died. And it made you want to kill yourself. Because you promised yourself that you wouldn’t let anyone put their hands on you like that after Max. That you wouldn’t let anyone love you after Max. It would be a betrayal. And even more so your kiss and your love were what killed Max. You knew, logically he got sick. But you couldn’t help but feel that it was some sort of punishment or contamination. You touched this wonderful boy with your ugly stupid evil hands and he shriveled up and died. You refused to let Ernst suffer the same fate.

So from that day forward you pushed him away. Ran home after school before he could see you. Made sure that you never served as altar boys at the same time, even if it meant you had to be alone with the clergymen. Because you would not kill anyone else. You locked yourself in your bathroom for nights on end with fantasies of bride murder and pictures of beautiful men and women who could never touch you and drove you mad but at least you could also never hurt them or they you.

You slipped up after Moritz Stiefel funeral. You saw him standing at the gates of the cemetery after it was all over, crying when no one could see him. And it would be only cruel, you decided, to not repay him for his kindness to you after Max’s death. Plus, Moritz dying has messed all of you up. That the soft spoken soulful boy had really killed himself, be it by hanging as Otto and Robert claimed or with a bullet in his head, was something none of them, even you, could comprehend. Dusty tears were staining Ernst Robel’s face and you walked up to him.

“Hey,” you managed after a second of staring at him awkwardly. 

“Hey.” He looked to exhausted to bother asking you why you have suddenly stopped ignoring him. Or maybe he just understood. 

“This isn’t your fault.” You said it frankly and he glared in response..

“I-I never said it was! What are you even talking about?” He spit the words at you clenching his fists and raising them as if he wanted to hit you. “Don’t talk to me you don’t know, you don’t CARE just like them rest of them! If you come near me again I’ll-” You flinched and shrunk back and he seemed to realize you were scared and lowered his fists. His eyes softened and he let his head hang. “Otto said he has no head left, Hanschen. He has no head and it’s all my fault.” He choked on the final word and his tears began again. 

“It’s not your fault he did this.”

“He failed because I passed. Everyone knows it’s true. Georg even said it to me. Told me I’m the reason Moritz owes him money now.” He laughed bitterly and swipes at the ground with his shoe.

“You can’t control that he failed.”

“I could’ve let myself fail. My papa doesn’t care if I pass so long as I go into the clergy. It isn’t like this for me. I should’ve failed on purpose. I knew what it was like for him and I-” He cut himself off again. You couldn’t think of a thing to say but instead leaned up and without thinking planted a kiss on his dirty lips, still wet from tears and snot. 

There was no shock on his face and he closed his eyes and kissed you back. But you pushed him away and shake your head.

“No, I can’t and I shouldn’t have. This will never happen again. I’m sorry.”  He nodded his head in understanding and backed away slowly not even letting the word ‘Hanschen’ trace his lips. You don’t cry.

If you had avoided Ernst like the plague before it only increases now. Every moment you spent near him was painful and just the very sight of him can cause your skin to itch and your head to ache. He was nothing if not accommodating and stayed out of your way but you found his eyes lingering on you when he thought you couldn’t see. 

But your life is just a cycle of seemingly endless funerals and soon it was time to put Wendla Bergmann in the ground. And you hadn’t thought your heart could break again but somehow you’re still capable of hurting even when you thought you were numb to the core. You sat in stunned silence at the back of the church listening to Father Kaulbach talk about purity and sin and redemption and the loss of a child. Watching the perfect tears and false looks of compassion. Same as always. Ernst’s hand slipped into yours almost off its own accord and you didn’t even attempt to pull away. You’d just given up. You were done trying to bargain with a world that took Wendla from you.

“Meet me at the vineyard. The top. After church tomorrow. Please.” The last word hung between the two of you desperately and he nods in agreement. “We won’t,  _ anything _ , I just can’t be alone right now.”

It wasn’t a lie in the moment. But that evening Ernst looked so beautiful and he wanted it and you wanted it and so you let him have you. And for a few hours everything was okay. And you loved him, you really did. You’d never realized it before then but him saying he did made it all make sense. You loved Ernst. And you weren’t willing to ever let that go.

So you let him meet you every Sunday, let him hold your hand in church and let him touch and kiss you when no one  is looking. Let him throw love letters into your bedroom window tied to pebbles. And when he finally does enter the vineyard where you lie with the bugs crawling in the branches  atop the mountain you let him hold you and touch you and whisper words of comfort in your ears when you feel like the sky will crush and this town will burn you alive.

And, you decide as you lie with him watching the now dark sky above you, that you love him alive. That you aren't corpses anymore but living breathing boys. And that this will not pass. This will not drift away. 


End file.
